Professor Spacetime and the Wonders of the Universe

Come with me, and I can show you all the wonders of the universe. All of space and time, at your fingertips!

COMPANION:

All of a space and time? Really?

PROFESSOR:

Well… anything in our future light-cone.

COMPANION:

So… most of space and time?

PROFESSOR:

More like a small and steadily-shrinking fraction of space and time, within the confines of a slowly contracting cosmological horizon.

COMPANION:

But it can travel to other galaxies, right?

PROFESSOR:

Indeed! You’ll be dead millions of years before we get there, though.

COMPANION:

Somehow I thought it’d be bigger…

Professor Spacetime and the Pocket-Sized Plot Device

PROFESSOR:

Quickly, my dear, grab the atomic screwdriver!

COMPANION:

Here it is… but what good is it to us now? We’re about to be dropped in a pit of lava!

PROFESSOR:

My dear, what isn’t an atomic screwdriver good for? This cunning device has gotten me out of thousands of scrapes over the years!

COMPANION:

But how does it work?

PROFESSOR:

It’s atomic!

COMPANION:

But that’s just a word. It’s like calling it a quantum screwdriver or something – you haven’t explained what it does.

PROFESSOR:

This is a life or death situation! I can’t possibly go into exposition now.

COMPANION:

You do that all the time.

PROFESSOR:

This is different! It would be far too difficult to explain my Spacelord science to a human.

COMPANION:

It sounds to me like you just slapped the label “atomic” on it sixty years ago when it sounded cool and futuristic so you’d never have to explain it, and now you’re stuck with it, even though it’s a bit naff.

PROFESSOR:

That was pretty easy, actually.

Professor Spacetime and the Witches of Vaxahar

PROFESSOR:

I fear we’ve uncovered a terrible evil, my dear. I thought the Witches of Vaxahar were just a myth!

COMPANION:

The Witches of Vaxahar? That’s far too many letters from the wrong end of the alphabet to be a good thing.

PROFESSOR:

The Witches are an ancient and powerful species from the beginning of time. Where Spacelords – like you humans – mastered the universe through a science based on mathematics, the Witches mastered a different science… one based on words. You might call it magic.

COMPANION:

Oh no! But… how will we defeat them, Professor?

PROFESSOR:

Well… in order to accurately model the universe, their word-science still had to be self-consistent, and satisfy basic philosophical axioms in the same manner as our mathematics.

COMPANION:

So it works exactly like math?

PROFESSOR:

Pretty much. Except they never got around to inventing numerals, or mathematical notation

COMPANION:

But that means…

PROFESSOR:

Yes, my dear.

COMPANION:

Word problems!

PROFESSOR:

Fiendishly difficult ones. Have you ever tried to model rocket equations using descriptions of trains converging from Cardiff and Brighton?

COMPANION:

They really are evil!

Professor Spacetime and the Thousand-Year Reich

MECHAQUEEN:

…and as the Earth died, we could not help but despair… until our savior came, to carry us away into the stars. It was the suffering of the children, you see. I think that was what moved the spacewhale most to pity.

COMPANION:

So that is how you rewarded her? Torturing her, for centuries, to carry your fossilized constitutional monarchy through the stars?

MECHAQUEEN:

We thought we had no choice!

COMPANION:

But that’s monstrous! How could you live with something like that?

MECHAQUEEN:

Actually, we couldn’t. Hence the whole memory-wiping thing.

PROFESSOR:

It’s a pretty ingenious solution, come to think of it.

COMPANION:

Professor! You can’t actually think they did the right thing? To imprison such a noble and selfless soul, who wanted only to save lives and alleviate suffering…

PROFESSOR:

Actually, I’m a consequentialist; though disturbing, sometimes we have to operate against our ethical intuitions in order to minimize suffering. Besides, your whole argument is predicated on the assumption the spacewhale has humanlike consciousness, and a humanlike capacity for empathy and suffering. Given its completely different evolutionary background and environmental selection pressures, this is beyond exceedingly unlikely; furthermore, its apparent selflessness also has to be held to be suspect. Given the vast emptiness of space, I would wager that spacewhales would be forced to use the k-selection strategy for reproduction; even if they had humanlike intellects, they couldn’t possibly share humanlike empathy for life, much less the lives of children, or they would be paralyzed by suffering and grief, at the knowledge the vast majority of their kin don’t make it to maturity, and end up starving to death in the vast emptiness between the stars. The spacewhale was probably there to feed on what was left after the solar flares destroyed Earth’s capacity to defend itself from spacewhale attacks.

COMPANION:

So what you’re saying is…

PROFESSOR:

The spacewhale is a dick, and deserves to be tortured.

COMPANION:

Oh. Well, then. Carry on.

Professor Spacetime and the Unresolved Sexual Tension

PROFESSOR:

I can’t! It wouldn’t be right! I’m a thousand-year old Spacelord, you’re just a girl!

COMPANION:

A woman, Professor! And don’t tell me you don’t want to kiss me!

PROFESSOR:

But the angst is the only thing carrying this season!

COMPANION:

Oh, Professor! All this – the spaceship, the wonders you’ve shown me, the fact you embody all the wisdom and experience of the older man, in the conventionally attractive body of a younger one – how could you not sweep me off my feet?

PROFESSOR:

We mustn’t, my dear!

COMPANION:

Professor… I should warn you, I-

PROFESSOR:

Yes?

COMPANION:

I’ve been reading fanfiction…

Professor Spacetime and the Translation Matrix

COMPANION:

Wait, seriously? You have a universal translator?

PROFESSOR:

Of course. Standard Spacelord technology.

COMPANION:

So you have a computer capable of instantly and seamlessly translating any language into any other, without significant context or prior exposure, and all you use it for is making conversation with aliens and Welshmen?

PROFESSOR:

Why does that surprise you?

COMPANION:

Because it’s impossible! Worse, it’s unlikely. A true universal translator would be nothing short of an extraordinarily powerful strong AI – capable of perfectly comprehending context and external reference and encoding these neatly into translated utterances – combined with magic. Zero-context translation would allow you to arbitrarily recover any plaintext from any ciphertext. You could use it to decipher Linear A! To crack every code ever! To generate reverse one-time-pads that turn meaningless noise into the secrets of the Universe!

PROFESSOR:

Yes, but then this wouldn’t be a very interesting television programme, would it?

COMPANION:

Face it, Professor. It’s all been downhill since Series 3 anyway.

Professor Spacetime and the Ominous Secret

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE:

And when the clock strikes twelve, his name shall be revealed!

PROFESSOR:

No! That’s impossible! It can never be!

COMPANION:

What’s the big deal? It’s just your name.

PROFESSOR:

I forsook my name long ago… I am only the Professor now. There is an ancient prophecy that, should my name ever be revealed, the Universe will come to an end.

COMPANION:

I don’t believe you.

PROFESSOR:

What? Why?

COMPANION:

Look, it’s just a name: an arbitrary ordering of sounds that can be produced by the Spacelord vocal tract. Since Spacelords are suspiciously primate-like, in every external feature, including the manner of their vocalizations, we can assume the physical constraints on the phonology of Spacelord languages are roughly the same as they are on human; therefore, the probability that, even after the virtual extinction of your species, some human somewhere in the wide universe has ever uttered a set of syllables which resembles your name approaches pretty near certainty. But the universe hasn’t yet ended.

PROFESSOR:

But… but all this foreshadowing! All these ominous clues, building throughout this series!

COMPANION:

It’s something far more sinister, I’m afraid. Do you think your name could ever actually be revealed onscreen? The fact that you’re merely the Professor is one of the few interesting things about you.

PROFESSOR:

It can’t be!

COMPANION:

It is. I’m afraid the showrunner’s just been writing himself into a corner.

PROFESSOR:

No! That means—

COMPANION:

Yes. The finale is going to be incredibly disappointing.

Professor Spacetime and the Christmas Special

THE CLOISTER BELL SOUNDS, SIGNALLING IMMINENT DISASTER

PROFESSOR:

Quickly, my dear! Reverse the polarity on the temporal stabilizers!

COMPANION:

It’s no use! We’ll never break free in time!

PROFESSOR:

Never say never, my dear! I’ll try to rephase the inertial dampeners with a blast of neutrino radiation from the timecore. Hold on!

COMPANION:

The saccharine singularity is about to devour the ship!

PROFESSOR:

Try to generate as much cynicism as you can! We can’t take another blast of mawkish cliches!

A BLAST OF SNOW ERUPTS FROM THE CONTROL CONSOLE, THROWING THE PLUCKY COMPANION ACROSS THE ROOM; THE DISTANT JINGLE OF BELLS IS HEARD

PROFESSOR:

Damn it all!

COMPANION:

Professor, I— I think I’ve been affected!

PROFESSOR:

Resist, my dear!

COMPANION:

I can feel it coming over me, Professor! Holiday cheer! The urge to repeat sentimental nonsense!

PROFESSOR:

But it’s absurd, my dear! Remember that! We’re nowhere near Earth, you’re the only human for billions of light-years! What possible relevance could a culturally specific human religious holiday have to our present circumstances?